BROCKTON,
Mass. — A 6-year-old boy is getting a lesson on the meaning of sexual
harassment long before he'll be able to spell it.

The first-grader was
suspended for three days for sexual harassment after he put two fingers inside
a classmate's waistband, school officials told his mother, Berthena Dorinvil.
The boy told her he only touched the girl's shirt after the girl touched him.

Experts say only in rare,
troubling cases can children that young truly sexually harass one another.

"The connotation is you're
getting some kind of sexual gratification, or wanting sexual gratification, or
are putting pressure on for some kind of sexual gratification, when a
6-year-old doesn't have that capacity," said E. Christopher Murray, a civil
rights attorney who has handled school discipline cases.

Dr. Elizabeth Berger, a
Philadelphia-area child psychiatrist, said this case seems to be an
overzealous attempt to ensure students feel safe in school after years in
which society was not attentive enough.

The boy's mother called the
Jan. 30 suspension from Downey Elementary School outrageous. She said she
can't even explain to her son what he did wrong because he's too young to
understand.

"He doesn't know those
things," she told The Enterprise of Brockton. "He's only 6 years old."

Brockton school officials
have not commented beyond a statement from Superintendent Basan Nembirkow that
said sexual harassment charges are always investigated and officials are
trained to deal with them.

The Brockton School Committee
defines sexual harassment among students, in part, as "uninvited physical
contact such as touching, hugging, patting or pinching."

First-graders who repeatedly
touch classmates need to be disciplined and taught what's appropriate, said
Nan Stein, a senior research scientist at the Center for Research on Women at
Wellesley College. But don't call the apparent discipline problem "sexual
harassment" because first-graders just don't get it, she said.

There have been similar
cases. In 1996, a New York second-grader was suspended for kissing a girl and
ripping a button off her skirt — an idea the boy said he got from his favorite
book "Corduroy," about a bear with a missing button. Earlier that year, a
Lexington, N.C., 6-year-old was separated from his class after kissing a
classmate on the cheek.

END

Note from webmaster
of Jesus-is-Savior.com...

Wake up everybody!
Why are the churches silent? I keep hearing Christians saying foolish
things like "Satan must run his course," others just calling me a "nut" or
an "embarrassment" to Christianity. What is it going to take to wake
people up, a militarized police state where preachers will be
imprisoned for
propagating hate speech, for preaching the Bible against homosexuality and
sin? What will it take? Are you just going to hand over your
firearms to the government, a violation of your 2nd Amendment Bill of
Rights? Already,
Anti-hate speech legislation has been passed in Canada and is now before
congress here in America. Folks, freedom isn't free. And by the
way, Democracy is NOT Freedom.
You need to
believe some of the things you hear.